How to Activate the HP Recovery Partition

Most operating systems offer specific utilities to back up and restore your machine in the event of a serious system failure. Hewlett-Packard computers do the typical operating system tools one better: HP computers come installed with a recovery partition that uses some of the machine's space for backup and recovery procedures. To activate the recovery partition and perform troubleshooting on a machine, you can use the HP Backup and Recovery Manager.

Click on the Start button.

Click "All Programs."

Click "HP Backup & Recovery."

Click "HP Backup and Recovery Manager."

Choose which recovery partition option you would like to use. Options include using the partition to create a recovery disk, restoring specific system files or performing a full system restore.